An American Zen Buddhist training center in the Mountains and Rivers Order, offering Sunday programs, weekend retreats and month-long residencies.
The R Word
Fundamentalists here and abroad have been giving religion a bad rap lately, and so-called militant atheists have used the opportunity to take up the offensive. But according to prominent sociologist Robert N. Bellah, both sides have it wrong: they are mistaken about what religion actually is.
In his essay “The Widening Gyre: Religion, Culture and Evolution” (Science & Spirit, July/August 1999), the evolutionary psychologist Merlin Donald postulates that religion emerged out of two developments in the evolution of human capabilities. The first of these involves mimesis, “learning by observing a behavior and mimicking it, acting it out, in our own lives.” Mimesis, he writes, “is a whole-body skill, unique to human beings, whereby we can use our entire bodies as expressive devices. It is the basis of most nonverbal communication, as well as art, craft, dance, and athletics. But more importantly, it is the primordial source of our communal cultural traditions.”
The second great evolutionary event in the background of what we call religion is the emergence of our capacity for speech, probably over 100,000 years ago. Donald describes the consequences:
Oral traditions were the inevitable outgrowth of this capacity for language. These traditions may be viewed as gigantic representational conventions that summarize the accumulated wisdom of a people. Such narratives were a great leap from the older framework of simpler ritualized behaviors that had been put in place by mimesis, and served as a kind of collective governor of values, beliefs, and behavior for every member of the society.
However, oral traditions did not displace or conflict with mimesis. They incorporated mimetic ritual under a more powerful system of narrative thinking, which produced “mythic” cultures. Myth, in the sense of an authorized set of allegories and narratives, became the ruling construct in such societies.
Modern society still preserves much of this structure, and still depends upon mimesis as a sort of elemental social glue. The universal form of traditional religion consists of precisely this: a narrative, a sacred story overlying a deeper core of mimetic traditions—ritual and beliefs whose origins lie in the depths of time. These form a “governing hierarchy” that regulates both individual consciousness and public behavior on much of the planet.
But although the deepest truths of our being continue to be expressed in mimetic and mythic forms, another much more recent evolutionary advance has also to be taken into account: the emergence of theoretic culture, the capacity for objective critical reasoning. The beginnings of theory as a cultural form go a long way back, but the first clear emergence of theory as an alternative to mimesis and myth occurred in the Axial Age, the first millennium B.C.E., in Greece, Israel, India, and China, and have to a considerable degree influenced the religions that derive from that period, that is to say, all the great religions that still survive. But just as mythic thinking did not and could not displace mimetic consciousness, so theory did not and could not replace mimetic and mythic culture. It gave the possibility of critical reflection that, at its best, could prevent distortions of older truths, but always with the possibility of adding new distortions of its own.
Theory can greatly enrich our religious life and has done so in all the great traditions for millennia. But theory can’t replace the older forms of human culture that give religion its vitality. When it tries to do that, it becomes a parody not only of religion but also of the realm of critical reason itself.
An example of this kind of parody occured at a recent conference on science and religion at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. The discussion, as reported in the November 21, 2006 New York Times, apparently took a turn toward a kind of anti-religious scientific evangelicalism:
Carolyn Porco, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., called, half in jest, for the establishment of an alternative church…
She was not entirely kidding. “We should let the success of the religious formula guide us,” Dr. Porco said. “Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome—and even comforting—than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.”
What she wants to “teach our children” is not a theory but, as she says herself, a story, that is, a myth. That the universe is incredibly rich and beautiful I have no doubt, but I know for certain that science is not in the business of telling us that and, in fact, cannot possibly tell us that and still be science. Even more clearly, science is not in the business of comforting us with the glorious and the awesome. All of its great achievements would be undermined if it tried to take on that role. In imagining that science can do what only religion can do, we have once again a category mistake, one that messes up science in the process. Further, it is dangerous to imagine that such a thing could be done while leaving behind the mimetic and the mythic, because what is thrown out at the front door will come in at the back door.
I have little formal religious training, perhaps a good thing, but a great admiration for the billions who use ritual to give their lives meaning. Monotheistic or Atheistic can only separate two groups that would in any other way of thinking be equal. My hope for humanity is to build bridges between humans like the picture of The Dalai Lama hugging Pope John Paul on the wall of the monastery I stayed at during a retreat in Assissi, Italy.
Robert Bellah claims an exceedingly broad purview for religion, “it is the many ways humans have sought to find meaning, to make sense of their lives” while marginalizing from his discussion a connotation of religion that also has a long history of usage, that is, it’s identification with belief in (a) supernatural being(s). It is precisely rejection of this belief that is at the heart of much atheist sentiment as well as disdain at religionist’s claims that they have privileged access to knowledge of the wishes and commands of such beings as may exist and the institutional imposition of these understandings on non-adherents or socially disempowered individuals. Atheists by and large, in my experience, do not disdain finding meaning, making sense of life or the exploration of transcendent aspects of human experience, they simply reject superstition and irrational beliefs as foundational to these pursuits.
Interesting,but...
It's wonderful to see a reasoned argument against Dawkins. As a long time atheist, I find Dawkins's specious arguments give atheism a bad name, and make it more difficult to be an atheist--everyone argues against Dawkins's postion, and can't her any other atheist arguments through his shouting.
As Bellah points out, one of the greatest errors is to mistakenly assume that religion is attempting a (bad) scientific explanation of the world. Of course, as Bellah explains, "it is the many ways humans have sought to find meaning, to make sense of their lives. As such, it is an inescapable sphere of life." It is not the description of the material world we find in ideology, but our way of living in that world. This is one definition of ideology--and we cannot have an "ideology-free" world, although we can make better ideologies (religions, politics, educational systems, etc.).
As for "spiritual not religious," that has always seemed to me to mean that the existing ideology is fine, or assumed to be unchangeable, and we should just cultivate an attitude of happy acceptance.
Of course, another of Dawkins's errors is assuming that all evils done in the name of religions would not have happened without religion. Just because a culture has to find a way to make its atrocities appear acceptable to its religion does not mean the religion motivated them--we might want to consider how many atrocities were not committed because they could not be justified to the existing religion.
Yes, Brendar, I agree. Religions not only seem to be the "politics of spirituality" but the ongoing script as sentient beings are seen as not capable of writing their own, always needing a master for direction. Although it could be said that the Buddha (a symbolic form for me) has provided a script as Jesus and many other masters have done, the wisdom is in the individual practice so simply defined as kindness and compassion. I like the "reiteration of meaning" idea which occurs in most practices, the ritual practice. It offers more clarity to the loveliness of it, the sitting, chanting, the reminder too that it is ritualistic to say "I love you" as a practice and an affirmation.
After this lenghty article, i am still not sure why one cannot prefer spirituallity to religion. Religion appears to be the "politics" of spiritually. And not necessary! Even the example of the so called deity terrorizing the young men! Good enough reaon to abolish religion. It seems to condone barbaric and unkind practices. I, for one, will stick with the Buddha, and seek kindness and compassion. Buddhism, i believe, is not a religion!
I think, in essence, he is saying that religion and spirituality cannot be separated and so you can't prefer one over the other. I suppose one might say that spirituality is an individual's participation in religion.
I think that your dichotomous view is the same as the questioner of the audience mentioned at the beginning of the article which the author finds an unhelpful false dichotomy.
Besides that, the author rightly points out that there is no such thing as "Christianity", or "Buddhism", or "Islam": Life is always particular, never general.
As an aside, Zen (Buddhism) has the barbaric practice of sneaking up behind people who are minding their own business quietly meditating and hitting them forcibly with sticks.
Touché!